Re: language abuse and machine translation

From: Alfio Puglisi (puglisi@arcetri.astro.it)
Date: Sat Mar 08 2003 - 13:19:42 MST

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    On Sat, 8 Mar 2003, Party of Citizens wrote:

    >Sample moronspeak:
    >
    >"All chickens are for us or against us. Some chickens cross the road.
    >There are good doer chickens and bad doer chickens. Therefore the chicken
    >crossed the road."
    >
    >Now this argument has three premisses and a conclusion. Logicians will
    >immediately recognize it as translatable into the symbolic language of
    >predicate calculus. But try translating that into French (and back to
    >English again) and you will understand why Powell is having problems at the
    >UN these days.

    I'm missing something, that sentence is perfectly capable of being
    translated back and forth. What do you mean?

    >You could use the YES/NO/AND/OR connectors of combinatorial logic which
    >mean exactly the same in Adult Normative Standard English (ANSE), as the
    >only connectors for linking descriptors. A descriptor would be any symbol,
    >word, phrase, clause, sentence etc. which can be UNDERSTOOD by
    >ANSE-speakers even if it is not conventionally used in ANSE as long as it
    >can be assigned a T or F truth value. The criterion for the phrasing of
    >decriptors is purely semantic, ie it must communicate (to that ANSE target
    >population). Its lexicon consists of the descriptors as above. Its syntax
    >is the syntax of combinatorial logic, to which all other forms of
    >arithmetic, logic and mathematics can be reduced. Can it be developed to
    >the stage at which it meets the semantic criterion of accounting for
    >everything we MEAN to say when we use ANSE?
    >

    Seems a good language for a S>1 entity :-)

    Ciao,
    Alfio



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